Smack Down!

The Huffington Post, despite much promise, is a huge disappointment. One reason is that the editors characterize any kind of discussion as a "battle" and any kind of response to criticism as a "smack down" or "slap" or somesuchother expression.

Now some have argued, wrongly I think (irony alert), that Philosophy is to blame for this adversarial culture of argument. This is what critical thinking and logic courses teach, they allege, so it's no wonder we have this language of argument filled with metaphors of war and sports. Scott Aikin has a discussion of that topic here.

But I don't think that's really the case for Philosophy. Speaking somewhat anecdotally, philosophers deploy critical analysis (including "the fallacy technique") to uncover the silliness of HuffPo style "debates." Here's a good example from this morning's HuffPo. It's an article which the front page calls "Barney Frank Smacks Down George Will." The actual article, however, is actually appropriately titled "Barney Frank, George Will debate Pot Legalization". This includes a video here.

I think this is actually a fun exchange. Frank argues that self-regarding behavior of adults is their own business, Will plays the conservative end of the conservative side (not the libertarian end), arguing that the jury is still out on these things, and that "liberalism" is averse to facts. Even if Frank had successfully dismantled the dishonest structure of Will's pseudo libertarianism, I wouldn't call this exchange a "smack down." Come to think of it, I'm not even sure what a "smack down" is.